Donor found for 12-year-old Alberta girl in need of bone marrow transplant.

After months of searching, a 12-year-old Alberta girl in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant has finally found a match.
Alex Pasichnyk of St. Albert, northwest of Edmonton, was diagnosed with aplastic anemia last June. It’s a rare disease that damages the bone marrow and causes a deficiency in all three blood cell types.
Since the diagnosis, her family had been looking for a bone marrow transplant and just recently found a match.
“They told us that we had a match, it was a nine out of 10 match,” Lisa Pasichnyk, Alex’s mother, told CTV Edmonton. “The only thing better would have been a 10 out of 10 match.”
Doctors have told the Pasichnyk family the quality of the match means Alex has a 90 per cent success rate.
The good news doesn’t end there as doctors told the family the process for the transplant could begin next week. The family heads to Calgary on Tuesday where Alex will go through tests to prepare her body for the Jan. 17 operation.
“(Doctors) want to start the process right away. I’m still trying to process it,” said Lisa Pasichnyk. “You want to be excited but it's terrifying at the same time.”
Following the operation, the road to recovery will not be easy. Alex is expected to need immunosuppressive therapy, chemotherapy and radiation.
“Having the match was part of the equation that we needed to solve,” said Sheldon Pasichnyk, Alex’s father. “The rest was going to have to be the transplant process itself and that’s a pretty big thing to have to go through.”
According to Harvard Medical School, patients with severe and chronic aplastic anemia that doesn’t respond to treatment have an 80 per cent chance of dying within two years. Patients also have a higher risk of developing leukemia.
After numerous donor drives from all over Canada and even in Poland, the family is just grateful to finally have a match.
“If all goes well this is a cure, so she can have her life back,” said Lisa Pasichnyk. “Whoever’s going to donate their bone marrow is going to save her life. That's what she needs, so what a selfless act.”